Edwin Mortens is almost blind, but has good hearing; his wife Erna is hard of hearing, but has excellent eyes. Paralyzed from the waist down, Edwin sits locked in his bathroom all day, every day, trying to liberate his mind from his body. The experiment is going relatively well: nearly all his bodily functions have ceased, his limbs are in a state of decay, and his digestive system is in the process of breaking down. "This body," he says, "is a sewer."

To pass the time, Edwin dedicates his days to chewing gum and screaming at his wife, on whom he is, nonetheless, entirely dependent;...

The Marquis de Sade is alive and well and living in Sweden--or perhaps author Nikanor Teratologen is the devil himself, sending the English-speaking world a Scandinavian squib to remind readers that such reassuring figures as vampires and serial killers are no more frightening than pixies or unicorns in light of the depravity contained in one quiet suburb. Reading like a deranged hybrid of "Deliverance," "Naked Lunch," and "Tuesdays with Morrie," and rivaling "The 120 Days of Sodom" in its challenge to our assumptions as to what is acceptable (or not) in literature, "Assisted Living"...

Dentist Karl Meyer's worst nightmare comes true when his son, Ole-Jakob, takes his own life. This tragedy is the springboard for a complex novel posing essential questions about human experience: What does sorrow do to a person? How can one live with the pain of unbearable loss? How far can a man be driven by the grief and despair surrounding the death of his child? A dark and harrowing story, drawing on elements from dreams, fairy tales, and horror stories, the better to explore the mysterious depths of sorrow and love, "Through the Night" is Stig S?terbakken at his best.

An intense novel about loneliness and agonizing passion, employing a reverse chronology,...